@Mojofix: going to have to agree with Aaron, 8/10 on a device packed with proprietary components and connectors seems kind of high actually. Are you just upset that they put the word "inexpensively" in quotes?

PC repair should not require a putty knife. Most Apple products are built like consumer toys that will be thrown on the scrapheap as soon as the new model comes out.

The fact that a Mac Pro can be repaired is not something that should trigger any special praise. These machines have always been different from Apple's other products. People should expect better of them. It's good that the new Pro is as repairable despite their proprietary parts. However, it's just what should be expected.

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Contrary to popular belief, the new Mac Pro is closer in design to an aluminum beverage can than a trash can. (Not that there's anything wrong with trash cans—some of our favorite astromech droids are shaped like trash cans.)

The back side (if a cylinder can have a back side) contains the power button and electrical inlet, as well as a tidy array of ports:

3.5 mm speaker and headphone jacks

Four USB 3.0 ports

Six Thunderbolt 2 ports

Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports

HDMI 1.4 out

Looks like neither trash nor fixer can get in through the top of this bin. Time to investigate that enticing lock switch...

Given how easily the outer casing is separated, I would not be surprised if companies like ColorWare to start offering custom color and finish services. Should be fairly easy to bead blast/anodize/paint compared to Macbook Air/Pro.

How do you remove the heatsink/cover from the SSD module? I see several vendors selling blades that are compatible but do not have the heatsink/cover included. I assume one would have to reuse the stock heatsink/cover.

The screw is a T8, we listed the T8 as required, we just sell a TR8 as our T8, to account for both T8 and TR8 screws. So if you have a T8 without the security divot, you'll still be able to work on this device =)

I agree. Look at the fan power connector, It's a ridiculous connector for a fan. It should also carry data for the wifi module, the 6-antenna array is also integral with the fan, with 1 extra for bluetooth maybe

Dominic is correct. The Airport/Bluetooth card and the antennas are housed in the fan area. It is under what is being called the Roof (the black cover in the middle of the fan). It is just adhered by glue, use a couple black sticks to pry it off.

Tom, it is only four antennas. My guess is three for Wi-Fi and one for Bluetooth.

Thank you, Greg. I hope they get the pictures out soon. I saw the airport extereme with 6 antennas, so I assume there will also be 6 antennas in this device. Now the config clears up. As a client device rather than a base station, it doesn't have to work on both bands simultaneously. So the 3 antennas are for 3x3 MIMO wifi, either 2.4G or 5G operation, and an additional 2.4G for Bluetooth. just like iMacs.

Teardowns are intended to provide a look inside a device, and are not to be followed as disassembly directions. We simplify the procedure down to a general overview, without including every screw or clip, so that we can focus the bigger picture of the device.

You're right, and we don't normally go into that level of detail for a teardown. Teardowns provide a first look at the hardware and an opportunity to assess repairability; they're not intended to be used as instructions. Not to worry, though—we have a complete set of step-by-step guides available for that very reason.

Everybody wants to know if the new Mac Pro can be run on its side or at least tilted (for some kind of rack mounting). If you put the MP back together, can you see if the fan works properly? You mentioned the probability of it being balanced. What happens if it's tilted 45 degrees?

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A view from above: The Mac Pro utilizes a giant triangular heat sink ("Thermal Core"), shared by the dual graphics cards and CPU.

Looks like the Mac Pro has taken some design pointers from the recent AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule bodies: a thin, vertical design with individual boards on separate sides.

We use our spudger to pry the graphics card data connectors from their sockets. This FCI Meg-Array connector is the same type used for the G4 & G5 PowerPC processor daughtercards, and looks to be a fully custom way of hooking up PCI-E, with many pins in a pressed-in connector.

@Joshua Rogers: No. Apple has been applying far too much thermal paste to its systems as a matter of routine for many years-going back to at least 2008. So much, in fact, that people sometimes see a temperature decrease of about 5*C by reapplying the thermal paste on the Macbooks and Macbook pros correctly. Compared to the mess they make in the laptops, those GPUs are actually pretty clean.

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But wait, there's more. Just one more: a second, slightly different FirePro card.

This GPU—same make and model—hails from Taiwan, unlike its Chinese-made twin.

The other important difference to note is that this card (and only this card) hosts the slot for the SSD. This seems to us like a potential opportunity for expansion—perhaps higher storage configurations make use of two of this variety, for doubling up on SSDs?

1) Cards differ physically (aside from the SSD). Look at those two holes up top - they are on opposite sides.

2) There are no PCIe lanes left. And even if there were. They would have to be correctly routed to where you need them. As it is even USB 3.0 doesn't have enough lanes (one 2.0 lane for all four ports - so don't count on running multiple bandwidth intensive devices over USB, use Thunderbolt instead). And BIOS would have to play ball with you (which is doubtful).

I think you need to look up the word 'proprietary'... I would bet that those 300 pin connectors are Molex HD Mezz or something similar. Just because it's not a connector you normally see on the outside of a personal computer, it doesn't mean that Apple has made a custom one. The Mac Pro will not be sold in huge numbers - making custom shape PCBs is simple, tooling up to make custom board interconnects is not and is probably not worth it (even for Apple) at these volumes. Get a magnifying glass out, look at the connector and I'm sure you'll see some branding on there that will lead you to the manufacturer.

As Dennis Murphy says, they look like connectors that have been used before.

The connectors for the 2 graphics cards do appear to be the same, 10x30 arrays, however the back side of the board clearly shows their respective pin utilizations to be quite different as one might expect. Perhaps a future iteration may go in that direction.

It will be interesting to see how Apple secures the new Mac Pro to the Apple Store table since they did not add on a Kensington security slot to the computer's body. I suppose the easy nature of how the machine is taken apart makes a Kensington security slot very insecure. Also, if the Mac Pro costs between $5,000 to $10,000, then a thief would easily bring a cable cutter to take the computer away. This makes a Kensington security cable simply very insecure. Thus the lack of security slot on the Mac Pro.

The base of the Mac Pro is one area where some sort of security clamp may be placed - something that is a variant of what can secure the Mac Mini - which also doesn't have a security slot.

Is it possible to connect the video card containing the SSD to either of the two connectors on the round daughter board? If so, then I hope someone gets a second video card with SSD controller to see if both can work at the same time. It would be huge if this machine can handle two SSDs. Of course it may be very expensive...

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With a rated output of 12.1 Volts and 37.2 Amps, we're looking at a 450 Watt power supply. The power supply has no dedicated cooling, and relies on the main system fan to keep cool—allowing the Mac Pro to idle at a whisper-quiet 12 dBA.

For comparison, we found a 450 Watt PSU in our recent Steam Machine teardown. The Steam Machine's SilverStone power supply featured a "silent running 80 mm fan with 18 dBA minimum."

And a quick look at what's left on the behemoth of a heat sink: Heavy gauge, flat power cables run from the PSU to the logic board and graphics cards, and remain intertwined in the heat sink.

I do not see the point. I own old AT SMPS they are about 20 years old now. All of them use electrolytic caps. All of them are running well over thousand of hours. It is not the type of the cap who is running bad. It is the quality. In this case all high quality Nippon.

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Mac Pro Late 2013 Repairability Score: 8 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair)

For being so compact, the design is surprisingly modular and easy to disassemble. Non-proprietary Torx screws are used throughout, and several components can be replaced independently.

The easily-opened case is designed to make RAM upgrades a snap.

The fan is easy to access and replace.

While it will require a bit of digging, the CPU is user-replaceable—meaning intrepid fixers should be able to save considerably by upgrading from the base-level processor configuration.

There is no room, or available port, for adding your own internal storage. Apple has addressed this with heaps of Thunderbolt, but we'd personally rather use the more widely compatible SATA if we could.

With some proprietary new connectors and tight cable routing, working on this $3,000 device without a repair manual could be risky.

What proprietary connectors? They all look like they are from a manufacturer's catalog, to me. If you're talking about the giant connectors for the between-board ribbons, they are commonly called "mezzanine" connectors.

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The microcontrollers on the inside of the port panel must be for the illumination that lights up the ports. Somewhere there's a sensor that knows when you're turning the thing around too. Do they use a MEMS sensor for that?

should be hidden inside the fan, packed together with most of the beamforming antenna array and an extra antenna into the I/O housing Apple got really innovative this time, they managed to squeeze everything into this tiny can

As usual, a great teardown. Thanks. The Mac Pro is an amazing piece of engineering, Apple did a great job, a work of art. Really nice, only Apple. You don't see hardware like this from other computer makers. I did not see a picture of the flex cables that have the big 300 pin connectors in any of the pictures. I would have thought they would have at least been in the last picture.

There are 4 USB 3.0 Ports above the 6 Thunderbolt 2 ports on the I/O Panel, and USB 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 in the USB 3.0 Spec. Just plug your hub of choice into one of these four ports.

Clever, clever, clever! Now if Apple designers would just apply this same brilliance to make their laptops, particularly the MBA, equally accessible. As a writer, I can't afford gear I can't fix easily. I'm stuck with an aging white MacBook until Apple delivers on that.

--Michael W. Perry, My Nights with Leukemia: Caring for Children with Cancer

The MBA isn't about to get any easier to repair. No way. Despite Al Gore (Mr Environment) being on Apple's board of directors, most of Apple's products are essentially throwaway.

However, if you want a relatively easy to fix Macbook you should grab one of the non-retina 13" Macbook Pros before they're discontinued. I bought one to replace my white Macbook and it's much more powerful. And it's easy to e.g. replace the hard disk.

jncw03: Use a Mini-DisplayPort to DVI adaptor. Monoprice.com has inexpensive ones. Note that there's a separate adaptor for dual-link DVI. You can also get Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI, VGA and DisplayPort.

If you search for LM4FS1 you probably find one of the following manufactures Burr-Brown (BB), Chipcon, GrayChip, NSC (National Semiconductor), Harris (RCA Electronics Pte), all owned by Texas Instruments and Micron, as I did on this web page.

Oh Mark you really have to be my new favourite tech friend :D I love how you have refuted almost every stupid empty unresearched comment here. People just come along and bash Apple with no research or understanding of the cost of the parts. I read on another forum that the D300s are 7870s hahaha. They are actually iirc the W9000 FirePro retailing at 3K+ each. People think that the machine can be competed with, then forget that Xeon is an enterprise class CPU, and compare it to an i7 :P So funny. You made my day :) with your concise and clearly understood evidence. Refreshing

Let's see...the only components replaceable off-the-shelf are the cpu & the ram--or would you add the SSD to that? And you think this merits an 8 out of 10 "repairability score"? As a far as "repairability" goes, if you cannot replace the individual components as needed you cannot repair it. Whether or not you have to tear stuff apart to disassemble it has nothing whatever to do with whether or not it is repairable. Try again. The Mac Pro is actually a 2 out of 10 on the repairability index while it may very well be an 8 out of 10 on the disassembly index--but a "disassembly index" tells us nothing about the ease or lack thereof in its repair (ie, if you can take something apart with thumbscrews but cannot buy replacement components as needed you cannot repair it, can you?)

Sigh. Can't you people at least attempt to find out what you're talking about before you troll?!?

"the only components replaceable off-the-shelf are the cpu & the ram--or would you add the SSD to that?"

Of course you'd add SSD to that. Why on earth not?!? And how about BOTH graphics cards. NOTHING in them is proprietary, and AMD is free to make compatible boards. As to the rest, you have no idea which parts Apple might have available for repairs, such as I/O boards, etc..

Besides which, most issues with circuit level logic are the result of single capacitor or SMD resistors going bad. If you can't replace those yourself, you have no business calling yourself competent at component repair. Try again.

The speaker is connected to the I/O board and is shown in the very last picture. Zoom in to find it. There's a two pin connector that connects it to the board and it looks like two screws to secure it. iFixit took the picture of the I/O board with the speaker already removed, but then included it in the final image.

Apple's design is typical Apple consumer bait for an under-powered PC compared to an equivalent PC of the same cost. It is not repairable or upgradeable with generic components, using parts that are either unobtainable by end users or, if they are available, cost a lot more than equivalent PC parts.

The last Mac Pro I owned was the "innovative" liquid cooled G5 which leaked corrosive chemicals that dissolved the innards turning the computer into toxic waste. Fortunately, for me, that didn't happen but its reputation caused that Mac Pro model to plummet to junk bond status in the used Mac market. Like the current Mac Pro, it used proprietary graphics cards which cost a fortune to replace or upgrade. I recently sold it loaded with thousands of dollars worth of still very useful software for the most I could get for it, $150. Fortunately, this Mac Pro isn't liquid cooled. Compare that to the Apple fanatic disparaged PC which cost less for the same capabilities and has a much longer useful life.

You seem to have this thing for posting completely baseless comments with NO evidence to support them whatsoever.

"Apple's design is typical Apple consumer bait for an under-powered PC compared to an equivalent PC of the same cost."

Oh really? Please list the machines capable of handling real time 4k video with similar graphics cards for less than the cost of the Mac Pro. Good luck with that. As soon as you actually bother to do the research, you'll find that just replicating the graphics cards will over flow your budget!

"It is not repairable or upgradeable with generic components."

Please explain how you think it is possible to innovate in a field, and pouch the boundaries back, using "generic components".

"The last Mac Pro I owned was the "innovative" liquid cooled G5 which leaked corrosive chemicals that dissolved the innards turning the computer into toxic waste. Fortunately, for me, that didn't happen but its reputation caused that Mac Pro model to plummet to junk bond status in the used Mac market."

What complete and utter nonsense! First, very few machines suffered from leakage issues, and after Apple replaced the LCS system with a Panasonic-fabbed LCS, there were essentially ZERO machines that suffered the problem. Beyond that, you have NO evidence that this issue resulted in used value falling. Please feel free to post a year by year comparison vs OTHER Mac Pros (not just of the G5) that refute this by showing a marked differentiation in depreciation coefficients between machines.

First, the current Mac Pro does NOT use proprietary cards, it requires special drivers. But you could make that argument of ANY OS. Just because Windows is the defacto standard does not mean its products work without software support. And since the only way to allow Mac Pros to use those cards would be to replicate the Windows 6x driver architecture, which IS proprietary, your point is rather silly and hypocritical.

"I recently sold it loaded with thousands of dollars worth of still very useful software for the most I could get for it, $150."

Leaving aside the fact that it is illegal to sell a machine with preloaded soft are like that without the install disks, your machine is at least SEVEN YEARS OLD. Try giving away your 7yo PC!

"Compare that to the Apple fanatic disparaged PC which cost less for the same capabilities and has a much longer useful life."

As an ex-pc guy who dealt with nothing but 800-1200 watt PSUs, is this really expected to be enough to power for 2 GPUs with 2 processors and 4GB of RAM each, let alone everything else?

I currently have a 27' IMac and I am always amazed at how cool it runs even under full load with graphics apps running full tilt. I know Mac "has a way" with things but even with the 27" Ive always wondered about the PSU and what kind of overhead is available. Fully taxed PSUs seem to not last too long in my experience.

"All the available ports have been consolidated onto one card, so if one of your USB or thunderbolt ports goes bad, you'll need to replace all of the ports on your machine, to fix it."

What a strange issue to raise.

A more realistic comment would be that they've split the traditional mother board into a separate processor support board, port board, and interconnect board and cable.

So if one USB port goes bad, you only need to replace all of the ports, rather than all of the ports, CPU support chipset, CPU socket, memory sockets, power regulation, ..... as you would on most other machines.

Or, of course, on either design you could just add some replacement ports via PCIe.

Bluntly, this machine is far less wasteful on component failure than the typical modern motherboard centric machine.

If the cost of replacing the Mac Pro's I/O board is the same or close to what it is for a new PC motherboard, it isn't tit-for-tat because a new PC motherboard replaces virtually all of the computer's components except for memory and the CPU and comes with a new warranty whereas replacing the Mac Pro's I/O board does not, it only replaces a subset of components and the declining or expired Apple Care warranty on the Mac Pro continues. Even if the cost for the replacement for the Mac Pro's I/O board is lower than a PC motherboard, which it probably wouldn't be by much, the replacement of a PC motherboard because of broken I/O port would probably be just the cost of the port connector and a bit of time to open the case, replace the I/O connector (desolder/resolder or unplug/replug) and reassemble the case. Another inexpensive solution available for the PC which is not available for the Mac Pro is to install a PCI expansion card with the I/O ports required/needed.

There were a lot of liquid-cooled G5 Mac Pros which leaked but Apple replaced a small percentage of them, virtually all in the USA only. For its cost, the current Mac Pro underperforms compared to a custom built PC of equal cost - look around the Net at benchmark comparisons and you'll find it. The Graphics cards are proprietary, what other computer uses the type of connectors used on the Mac Pro's - try to buy one. I used to be a Mac Fanatic/Macophile too but I got over it.

For all The Upgraders, upgrade the cpu to Core i7 Extreme 5960X , the GPU can upgrade To the D700,, the sdd is upgradeable , ANd Extra, You can install well WhatEver You Wnat Whit Thunder2, Just pucharse a bizon box and plug on it a Titan X Pascal, Or pucahrse To Bizon box And 2 Titan X Pascal, A extralergue SLI Land, and do a sli.

The problem with thunderbolt 2 : its going through the PCI-2 and not the PCI-3 lanes wich are used for graphic cards so there is a bottleneck.

But the bigger problem either, is that the compatibility are not so simple. Actually connecting an external GPU to a nmp will give you an error code 12 in Windows bootcamp and there is no drivers for pascals cards in iOS for the moment. soon...with sierra

Theoretically you could do " WhatEver You Want " but sadly the true is that the nmp design is quiet "upgrade less" and you have to be a very confirmed programmer, they dont give actually the solution because programmers are fighting : http://forum.netkas.org

Or the other solution could be to adapt the hardware, which is not so clean as software re-programming, but could give the possibility to use the PCI-3 Lanes with only 1 GPU and at least had a 2nd internal PCI based flash storage to the other free PCIe3 such as the new intel ssd.

External GPU on Mac Pro 2013 can only use a PCIe 2.0 x4 connection for throughput and the internal GPU cannot be upgraded past D700 because the computer uses the undocumented and proprietary ~300 pin graphics board flex cable connector between the GPUs and CPU. http://www.ifixmaccomputers.com/mac-pro-...

I own the highest-end Mac Pro 2013 configuration and I can tell you its specifications going into 2018 are underwhelming without further upgrades. I had to use a custom-made dongle to upgrade the hard drive to 2 terabytes and 50% faster than Apple’s best offering and I have to reverse engineer the Mac Pro myself to upgrade the internal graphics cards past the D700. The only internal components that are able to be upgraded with 3rd party solutions without reverse-engineering trade secret knowledge internal to Apple is the CPU and the RAM.